PALACES AND PAUPERS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 112, 15 May 1906, Page 4

PALACES AND PAUPERS.

Mr F. A. Mackenzie has contributed four articles on London workhouses to the "Daily Mail," which we are not surprised to learn have caused considerable stir. The palatial style in which indoor relief is administered by the London Guardians is simply staggering. Paupers are now lodged in palaces. "The old simple style of workhouses,"' writes Mr Mackenzie, have given place to elaborate stonefaced structures, with wide carriage drives, and at times with great lawns and shrubberies around their lofty apartments." Great buildings mean corresponding contractors' bills. In St. Olave's a new workhouse cost close upon £300 for each inmate, or enough to house six or eight people in two cottages such as those shown in last year's exhibition. "How many working men 'ratepayers," asks -Mr Mackenzie, "live in a house costing . . . .

£1800 for a family of six?" Jt is only •fair to say that the guardians seem to have got value for their money. The baths are of porcelain. The handbasins are fitted with hot and cold water pipes. The floors are of parquetry. The kitchens are lined with white tiles. The kitchen ranges are heated by steam and the ovens by gas. Tho wards are warmed by hot water, with the addition of open fireplaces for the sake of cheerfulness and ventilation. Naturally, when the paupers are lodged on this scale the rooms in which the guardians transact business are not forgotten. Consequently we are not surprised tp learn that in one workhouse the Board-room chairs cost from £4 17s 6d to £9 10s each. A guardian is too precious an article to have his portly person supported by anything less costly than mahogany and Spanish leather. In short, from first to last the pauper is treated as an Imperial functionary, who must be kept in such a way as to reflect- glory on the ratepayers who have to feed this monstrous cuckoo. It is no matter for astonishment that workhouses built in this fashion are found highly attractive. Mere external splendour might be wasted on the class by which they are chiefly filled, Bijt the food supply is on a corresponding scale. At the Poplar Workhouse the contracts are for the supply of the best English wether mutton, and for the prime cuts of bacon of the most esteemed brandy. There—and wo dare say that in this respect other London workhouses are not behind i'oplar-—no pauper is^jnsulted by being asked to eat Australian mutton or New Zealand lamb, or to put up with any part of the pig save that which furnishes those/s treaky " rashfjrs SO dear to connoisseurs. It is by these means that the London Guardians secure the presence in their workhouses of " over 5000 healthy men and women in the prime of life, a large proportion of whom are living in comparative idleness, to the permanent destruction of tneir power ov will to work." And this does not include the casuals. The really wonderful thing is that, under the system which the guardians of the poor in London have s«t up, and which the Local Government Board has hitherto, whether from fear of unpopularity or from easy good nature, been content to tolerate, any man or woman who has not ample, private means should prefer paying rates to living on them.